Month: February 2016

Have you heard about the cool things called Data Analytics or Data Science? Sounds sexy right? No? 🙂 Well, it better does, ’cause according to World Economic Forum’s “The Future of The Jobs” 2016 report, by 2020 Data Analytics is going to be the most required skill by employers. You see where I’m going?

New job market trends require everyone to be aware of at least the basics of Data Analytics. Here’s an intro video to get an idea what it is.

Today we are getting tons of data every moment and it can’t be analyzed without specific technologies. Every employer or organization needs people with these skills, so mastering them can be extremely helpful for you, especially if you are a location independent worker or a freelancer.

Data analytics is a science for collecting, storing and analyzing data, so to speak, “making sense of it”. It may seem to you, that if you are not a programmer, mathematician, engineer or someone from that sphere, you don’t need it. But you need it more in your life than you can imagine.

Of course, you won’t become a data scientist in 1 month or even 6 months, but you will start understanding how data works and most importantly, what level and what kind of data science do you need for your work.

So, here are 5 best free online courses, that I put together for you to save time. Right now I’m learning more advanced data analytics skills to use them as a journalist and a marketing specialist. I’ve collected the courses that don’t require advanced mathematics or coding background. They are free and easy to get started.

This is a collection of short 2-5 min. video interviews about the very basics of Data Analytics. This will really help you get an idea about the topic and get started and won’t take too much time from you.

Course created by: University of Sheffield. Level: beginner. Duration: 3 weeks (calculated 3 hours per week, but you can do faster), Certificate: available for‎ £34 ($49) if desired.

This, I think, is a must-do course. While you are not a data scientist, you need to know what all the numbers and statistics presented in media mean and should you trust them or not. This is a part of being media literate and making educated decisions about the information you get.

Course created by: European Journalism Center. Level: beginner. Duration: 1 month (there are 4 modules and it’s advised to do each in a week, but you can go faster or slower). Certificate: None.

It says “Doing journalism” in the title, but this course will be useful for anybody, who wants to learn how to start using data, find sense and stories in messy, complex data sets and visualize it in a manner, that’s understandable for non-scientists.

Course created by: Facebook, MongoDB, Zipfian Academy. Level: Intermediate. Duration: 2 months (it’s calculated to be done with 6 hours per week, but you can do it at your own pace). Certificate: None (this course is a part of Udacity’s 1-year “Nanodegree” program ($199/month), at the end of which you can get a certificate).

This course requires a little bit data science background but it’s an intro, so you will learn everything from the beginning. You will also have a chance to work on a project with real-life data from New York Subway.

Course created by: University of Texas Arlington. Level: Intermediate. Duration: 9 weeks (calculated – 5 hours per week, but you can do it at your own pace). Certificate: available for $50, if desired.

This course will teach you about open source programs for analyzing big data, social network data etc. You also learn the basics of the cool softwares like Tableau, LightSide, Gephi etc. It’s a very useful course, so definitely worth trying.

Of course, this is not the whole list, there are tons of useful learning materials, videos, paid courses, but this can be a good guide to start.

One of the ways to learn better is to practice your learned tools on real world problems – be it writing an article, analyzing marketing data for your company or just analyzing public data to find stories or connections. You can even make some interesting discoveries and write about it.

Let me know in the comments below once you try them and what you think. We can even do some interesting projects together 🙂 Share this source with your friends or who you think might be interested in learning this much-required skill set.

Happy Learning!

From LA with love 🙂

Mariam

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with any of these web pages, courses or universities. I’ve made the list solely based on my experience and research.

It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.

Leon C. Megginson, 1963

Mattaburrasaurus Skeleton – Queensland Museum.

World Economic Forum has just published “The Future of The Jobs” 2016 report and when you look at the numbers, it’s simply hard to believe. The Report says, that the most wanted skills today didn’t even exist until 5 years ago and 65% of today’s elementary school students will work in professions, that don’t exist today.

Isn’t this mind-blowing? Would the world imagine this 5-10 years ago? Are the employers and even employees ready for this? ‘Cause if not, bad times are coming.

From the “Future of the Jobs” 2016 Report.

So, the value of self-education or vocational, sometimes informal education, will soon be higher, than the one from an old academic institution, which refuses to change. Already today, looking at the curriculum of respected universities, you know for sure, that after 3-4 years you won’t be needing the skills they teach you now. And this is the state in the developed countries. Imagine what’s happening in post-soviet countries, for example.

We are living the Fourth Industrial Revolution – the most rapidly changing economical reality in our history and a lot of things are going to change during our lifetime. This means, that like pretty much in any other Industrial Revolution in history, we are going to loose a lot of jobs in short term, but create more jobs of other kinds in a long term. Well, the thing is that the “Future” is already here. Unlike the past revolutions, we have maximum 5 years to adapt, or else the market trends will crash us.

To me, the most important thing in the report was this part: “Across the countries covered by the Report, current trends could lead to a net employment impact of more than 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labor market changes over the period 2015–2020, with a total loss of 7.1 million jobs—two thirds of which are concentrated in routine white collar office functions, such as Office and Administrative roles—and a total gain of 2 million jobs, in Computer and Mathematical and Architecture and Engineering related fields.”

So, the skills of 7.1 Million people in 15 countries are not wanted any more. Will they be able to adapt to the new market demands? If not, what will happen to them? These are the scary questions, that interest me.

Source: “The Future of The Jobs” 2016 Report.

This here is the rise of the freelancer economy. You need a service? I’ll do it for you from my own location and with my own equipment, you just need to get the result and pay me for that. Of course, there will be jobs that will require physical presence, but there are already tons of successful baking companies on Etsy, which deliver cakes and cookies by post and no office is needed.

Organizational behavior theories say, that the older and bigger the organization is, the

From “The Future of the Jobs” 2016 Report.

slower it changes. So the changers and players of the new economy are going to be rather small start-ups and experimental educational projects, than big corporations and 100-year old universities.

The 2013 report by MIT Sloan Management Review – “Embracing Digital Technology” (research was conducted by interviewing executives of 450 companies in 106 countries) showed, that most of the CEO-s of big companies (more than $1B in revenue) are not ready to embrace the digital changes and don’t see the urgency to change.

78% of respondents said that the digital change will be urgent in their company in the next 2 years, while only 38% said that the transformation is on their CEO’s agenda.

So, most of the CEO-s are in denial and think they can chose – to change or not. The report also underlines a very important point, that most of the company CEO-s are older and techno-phobic and don’t want to learn how to incorporate technology in their work.

As the needs of the market change, a lot of new startups are being created today to answer the market needs, that big corporations and old companies are very slow to accommodate.

According to the “Kauffman Index Report 2015” on Startup Activity in United States, 2015 was the most active year for start-up creations since 2010 and, according to the report, is the largest year-over-year increase in the last 2 decades.

Another interesting thing in “The Kauffman Index” was the fact that “opportunity Share of New Entrepreneurs was 79.57 percent in the 2015 Index.” This means, that nearly 8 out of 10 people had a job or were students before they opened a company, but did it, because they saw new market demands and opportunities.

From “Kauffman Index Report” 2015.

One of the great examples is Uber (ride providing company through phone app) – a $200K startup which is valuated at $62.5 Billion today and has even no proper offices. There was a huge demand in transportation market for lower prices and better service and they were right on time to see and meet that (how fair are their wages to drivers, is a topic for a whole new post).

Of course, elephants (being big companies) move slower, than mice (being startups and freelancers), but in this new freelancer economy, when skilled people don’t want to seat in the office and work with 1 employer any more, companies have no choice than to adapt, otherwise they will loose their employees, who make them money and die eventually.

Like in case of static companies, one-skill office employees are not wanted any more. Remember, that after computers appeared in offices, typists lost their jobs.

So what can you do to survive these drastic economical changes?

The only answer is: LEARN NEW SKILLS ALL THE TIME!

You don’t have to go to college or university again. There are tons of free and paid online courses, that will help you do that. Read, watch videos, practice, talk with others, learn however you want, but learn.

Soon I’ll make posts about best online courses to learn data analysis and other new skills, that you need to survive.

Make sure to share my post with your friends and follow my blog by e-mail or social media to get the updates!